


Monsters

by GloriousBlackout



Category: Death Note
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 00:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriousBlackout/pseuds/GloriousBlackout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing that brought fear to the great detective, L, was monsters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monsters

The only thing that brought fear to the great detective, L, was monsters.

Not the monsters found in storybooks, ones that hid under the beds of children or lived in haunted houses - no, L was beyond that. After all these years of solving difficult cases he found that the only monsters worth worrying about were human beings.

There were human monsters who murdered others without reason. In his short life he had encountered many of these, if he remembered correctly he had solved over three thousand brutal cases and sent three times that number of monsters to prison, and each case brought more horrors to his brilliant mind. How many times had he dealt with people who found enjoyment in squeezing the lives from their victims or who liked to experiment on new ways to torture a human being as if their crimes were a game? Although, when a criminal went up against L then it was just a game in the end. A matter of winning and losing.

There were also selfish monsters. Being so isolated from other human contact besides Watari, a man too great to show any display of selfishness in the company of the young detective, L hadn't been presented with as many of these monsters as the average person, but was only too aware of their existence. Even watching a TV program would bring these people to the foreground, L often saw people who had everything they could possibly wish for complaining about how miserable their lives were. Monsters who gorged themselves even though they had never experienced true hunger. People who didn't care about the needs of others as long as they were satisfied.

And yet, it was not these monsters, or the many others guilty of the vast amount of sins that could be committed by a person, that terrified him most. To him, the worst kind of monster were monsters who lied. These were truly the most despicable in L's opinion and yet if he were ever asked to give a reason why he knew he'd have to consider the question at length. He supposed it was because they summed up every monster on this earth, those who lied to save their own skin, keeping the truth locked away when it could be used to benefit others greatly. People who got so caught up in their lies that before long even they lost sight of the truth. Those who asked for trust they did not deserve.

Actually L knew perfectly well why this monster scared him most.

He was that monster.

Everything about him was hidden away, every second word that came from his mouth was either untrue or mere speculation that he would have others take as fact. He wanted trust from other detective agencies and investigative bureaus, knowing that while they lapped up every deduction, every conclusion, every word even; he knew that he, in no way, deserved their trust. And yet he continued to accept it, for he could do little else.

He had convinced himself that were he to come across a human who was as much of a monster as he was then he would surely be eaten by it. And true enough, as he looked into the eyes of Kira in his final moments, he knew deep down that despite being right all along it had made no difference. It was the same as a child trying to convince his parents that there was a monster in his cupboard and still being stolen away by it in the night despite this knowledge. Knowing was never enough when it came to monsters, you had to be capable of destroying that monster and L knew, in this case, that he never could destroy Kira on his own.

After all, Light Yagami was a monster in every sense of the word. The very worst kind that L had been running from for so long.


End file.
